


How Impolite, How Imprudent

by Jenwryn



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode Tag, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Post Episode AU: s04e10 Inmates, unprotected sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 00:38:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1284730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Anything’ll do?” he suggests. It isn’t bitterness. It’s empathy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Impolite, How Imprudent

**Author's Note:**

> Includes paraphrasing from the Song of Solomon, 4:16. (Edit 11/03/14: fixed a couple of typo boo-boos I hadn't noticed until now. Oops.)

_what a lovely, pleasant thing you are, lying here upon the grass_.  
—Song of Solomon, 1:16 (TLB)

*

Daryl’s hands are coarse and heavy, and the layer of grime that covers the rest of him covers them too— but they’re dry, and they’re warm, and she can’t help but angle closer when they touch her. He’s rutched her singlets up a ways, has thumbed the cotton back; but his eyes are still uncertain. 

It’s up to her to press his hands closer, heavier, upon the bare skin of her belly.

He makes a sound, almost wounded. She feels guilty— and then she doesn’t. She doesn’t stop, either way. She squeezes his wrists. Strokes his palms against her. Touches at his fingertips. She lets go; pulls her singlets up and over her head. Eyes him, almost defiantly. As defiantly as she knows how. 

He was the one who had thrown the old woollen blanket across the straw. Tartan. Red. It smells slightly of engine oil, and considerably of the saltines they’d eaten for dinner.

Daryl’s fingers shift, experimentally. Beth lies down beneath them. 

It’s dry here, at the top of the barn. No walkers, here. Not in this barn. Not her stepmother. Not the little girl Daryl had searched for. The farm is so long ago, so long away – like the prison, now, and it’s people, too. 

Divide and conquer, and they’ve already been divided. 

The world has closed in around them. Is loud only with the distant beat of thunder. Loud only with the roll and the pulse of the storm. Loud only with the sound of Daryl’s breathing, and of hers, in the quiet spaces between the drumroll crashes. 

No movement in the world, except for his hands upon her stomach.

His palms slide, slowly. His eyes are darker, in the dull light. Grow darker still, the more she leans into his touch. 

“Daryl,” she says. Requests. Insists.

She thinks her tone sounds a little like one of Maggie’s. It’s a vague thought, almost irrelevant, half surprised, slipped from somewhere in the back rooms of her mind. 

Daryl’s palm scoots across her bellybutton. Dips, along the downwards slope that curves there, when she’s lying on her back. Curls, across the bluntness of her hipbones. 

His other hand hangs in space, thumb hovering above her breast. A hair’s breadth away. If she moved, she would feel it. 

“Are you waiting for a written invitation?” she asks. And that one, for sure, that one right there is the Maggie in her head. The voice that makes her stronger. The voice that makes her bolder. 

Daryl looks at her. Really looks at her. Lets the furrows in his brow smooth out, as he studies the length of her where she lies, half undressed, necklace curving between her breasts. His eyes narrow with deliberation. With consideration. 

Beth shivers. 

“Please,” she says, and it’s her own voice again. Her own self. “I need–” she tries. “Anything–” 

She breaks off. It sounds bad, when she starts to say it out-loud. When she begins to let it exit the privacy of her mind. Impolite. Imprudent. 

“Anything’ll do?” he suggests. It isn’t bitterness. It’s empathy. Daryl gets it. Daryl’s been there. Daryl’s there right now, perhaps. He runs his gaze along her. His fingers on her belly twitch; slide beneath the band of her jeans, warm and seeking. 

He says, simply, “Yeah, alright.”

Beth inhales as he takes ahold of her. As he spreads himself across her. His body is warm. The muscles in his arms shift as he props himself up, as he keeps the weight of him from hurting her. She can feel the tickle-scratch of his beard as he studies her, up close now, too close, and she wants to turn her head away but she won’t, so she glares at him instead. He huffs out a grin, and leans even closer. His leather vest has been taken off – is resting by his weapons, in easy arm’s reach – but she can still smell it on him. The scent is rich and heady, above the undertones of the muddied water they’ve been washing in. He’d been a gentleman, then; had turned his face away, bow to the ready and gaze averted. Now, his gaze flares across her. 

She wonders what he’s seeing. She wonders if it matters.

He kisses her, rough and tough, and she bites right back: sudden loss of plot, sudden shot of feelings to the gut. He kisses her, close and wet and crooked. She’s open to him, mouth wide, face shifting to get a better hold. She thinks about how ridiculous this must look, how ridiculous kissing is if you strip it to the theory, but ridiculous is nothing when the feel of it is a fire in her belly. The taste of him, of his mouth, of his tongue, of the powdered milk and old saltine crackers. The feel of him, as he presses her closer to the blanket; as he covers her, as he lies with her – _let him come into my garden, let him eat my choicest fruits_ , she thinks, she marvels, words from her life before this curling up unbidden. She tugs at his sleeveless shirt, needing it gone, needing his skin bare against hers. It’s a struggle, she’s kissing him too hard. His teeth bang against hers, and it’s jarring. She startles, but he barks out a laugh, and she’s lost in the sound of it. The sound of his gasping joy, beneath the thrum of the thunder; the sound his joy, reflected by the crinkles at his eyes. He takes off the shirt for her, letting it fall to the side. Letting her look at the lines of him, at his scars and at his ink. She’s lost her footing; lost, and here, and she pulls at his belt, buckle sharp against her shaking hands. 

“Have you—?” he asks. 

He’s helping her shove down his jeans. He’s helping her disentangle from her own. (Their clothes are stiff with dried blood. Snagged with brambles. Don’t catch your knuckles on a knife. Keep them close in case you gotta run.) He pulls her jeans from her ankles; knickers, too. Without their denim, the two of them are all knees. All pale leanness and downy hair; razors are for jawbones now, unless you’ve done one hell of a run. 

He grips her thigh. Strokes his hand against it. He grips her hip, and squeezes. 

“Have you ever—?”

“Hmm?” she asks. She really doesn’t get it straight away. She’s distracted. She’s memorising the sight of him. She’s appreciating his erection; his erection is real. Isn’t faked. Isn’t dead. Is both present and accounted for, and he’s letting her touch it; he’s letting her wrap her hand around him, is letting her feel the heat, and the heaviness. She’s sitting up again, to get a better angle. To stroke, slowly. 

She only processes his question when he falls still. When his body returns to controlled. To cautious. 

Has she had sex before, that’s what he wants to know. Oh. 

“Yes,” she says. It’s not the decent answer. It’s not the answer she’s supposed to give, not a girl like her, and she flushes. Embarrassed. Embarrassed, against all logic, against all intelligence. “Jimmy,” she adds. Unnecessarily. Irrelevantly. Jimmy was so many lives ago. 

If Daryl notices her reaction, he doesn’t mention it. He simply nods. Returns to being pliant beneath her touch.

He stays on his knees for a while, watching as she touches him. One hand moving to cover hers, encouraging her to squeeze the harder. She always liked this, with Jimmy. Always liked the feel of him, in her hand. She likes the feel of Daryl. She likes the noise of the tiny sounds he’s barely making.

“Hey,” he says, gruffly, after a time. The storm is quickening outside the barn, steady beat of water on the roof. “Not gonna get much out of it if you get me off like that.”

He’s grinning, when she looks at him, his eyes heavy-lidded and his lips kissed red.

He lets her wrap her arms around his neck. Lets her drag him down on top of her, blanket beneath them. Lets her kiss him some more. Lets her be demanding. Impolite. 

Impolite, and burning.

She spreads her legs for him, and that feels demanding too. She lifts her knees, presses her heels against his lower back. Lines him up, and helps his cock to push inside of her. 

She watches eyes widen at the sudden pressure. She knows that she’s tight. It smarts, inside of her, as she jerks her hips up against him, pressing him in the rest of the way. It smarts, but she doesn’t care. She want to feel the full of him, wants to feel the tug of his foreskin where he barely seems to fit. She wants to see him, too: wants to see the way his breath catches, the way his throat works, the way he has to steady himself, fists bunching in the blankets beside her shoulders. 

She wants him to fuck her. Wants him to fuck her thoroughly. Wants him to fuck her through the sting of it. Wants him to fuck her til it bruises. Wants to feel it, in the morning, after the storm has passed; wants to feel it, when the thunder has stopped rattling the world and its walkers. 

There’s a chance she might have said that out-loud.

Daryl groans. Daryl goes still, like a boy trying not to come, like Jimmy would do, back when they were brand new at hiding in her Daddy’s barn. 

Barns and sex, she considers, as Daryl adjusts himself inside of her. Maybe that’s the cause of this. Maybe it’s an instinct.

“You good?” he asks. He’s focussed on her again, on all of her; concern and curiosity. Slow glow of appreciation. 

She nods. She digs her heels more firmly against his back.

And then he starts to fuck her.

Slowly. Too slowly. Long, steady drags that almost pop his cock back out of her. She groans. Quiet, gasping moans. She hadn’t planned this far ahead. She hadn’t made presumptions. She hadn’t necessarily expected that he would be interested in getting her off, as well. She cries out, when he slides deeper still, when he angles upwards, when he scrapes his dirty nails against her dirty scalp. He kisses her again, shuts her up with his mouth, with his tongue. He kisses her, and he swears against her lips; _motherfucker fuck_ , he gasps; _sweet Christ_ , he whispers. His tongue trails saliva across her cheek, as he drags it from her half-closed lips to lick at her neck, to suck at her ear. 

Daryl’s moving smoothly, now; moving smoothly inside of her. The tug of his foreskin has shifted from discomfort to pleasure; the slide of his smoother skin makes the blood pound in her veins. It’s good, it’s great, against the increasing wetness of her, and she grabs at his arms, grasps at his shoulders. She feels the muscles there as he rocks into her. She tries to ground herself against him, tries to make the build of her orgasm last. He presses himself deep and he holds it there, the shock of his stillness breaking through her even as he bites down on her earlobe —she has to muffle her cries with the back of her hand, has to mouth down upon it as she comes, cancelling out the sound of her voice, and the song of his name sung with it. The song races, his name races; through her head, between her breasts; it beats like a hammer on her heart, on her ribs, on her skin, and oh, and oh.

Thunder swings and falls as she cries out against her hand. As she rides the feel of him within her; the cover of his body and his mouth. As she comes, deep and hard and long and good.

He’s still fucking her, when she sinks back down. Her legs are lax against his hips, heels slipped down to the gentle slap of his hips. Her back is shifting steadily against the blanket. She appreciates the woollen rough of it, and the hold of Daryl’s arms wrapped around her. She can’t remember when he’d scooped her up, when he’d put his hands behind her. She finds her own hands – loose against his chest now, apparently – and runs her nails against his shoulders, experimentally. She scrapes harder, when his lips part. She digs in sharp, against his skin. She drags her legs back tight around him. She covers his mouth with hers, seeking his warmth with her tongue.

He comes, hard, and she can feel that too, can feel the motions of his cock inside of her, throbbing and twitching, and the release – the release. He comes across her thighs, too, hot, as he pulls out too late. There’s the tangle of limbs, and the heat of his orgasm wet against her. Somewhere, vaguely, she knows she’s supposed to feel alarmed. Instead, she feels soft, and sated. She feels pleased, too, with the sight of him. Daryl, staring down at her, wide-eyed and naked, cock leaking, cock trailing wet against her wondering, trembling legs, as she reaches up to pull him down again. 

“Feel you,” she mumbles. “Want to.”

She tugs at his shoulders. Harder. Insistent. Impolite, again. 

He lets her. Lets her drag him close. Warm. Quiet. 

The weight of him is good against her hips. Good against her breasts. She has to breathe carefully to carry it, but it’s _good_. It’s right. 

“Beth,” he says, and it sounds like crooning. 

Thunder rolls across the sky. The world screams white with lightning. Closer, now. Closer, ever closer.

“Sleep a while,” she says. Calmly. Content. Reaching for her gun with the hand not closed around his hip. “I’ve got this.”


End file.
